On rereading Charles Dickens's "Little Dorrit" and remembering my father as well as Alec Guinness as Mr. Dorrit

Before I read Charles Dickens's "Little Dorrit" in 1999, I'd seen Christine Edzard's 1987 film with Alec Guinness as Mr. Dorrit, Derek Jacobi as Arthur Clennam, and Sarah Pickering as Little Dorrit. Although I've watched the film again since then, I'd forgotten many details before my recent rereading of the novel, so I was overwhelmed anew the other day when an ailing Mr. Dorrit (presumably having a stroke) speaks of his time in the Marshalsea prison while at a social event in his honor. My father, who loved Guinness and his Mr. Dorrit, succumbed to his third stroke in September 2016, twenty-plus years after he first introduced me to the film. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 28 November 2022)

 

Alec Guinness, Derek Jacobi, Sarah Pickering